The U.S. Dept of Transportation (DOT) along with other federal and state agencies continuously form and revise policies in the trucking industry to increase public and environmental safety. In an effort to reduce driver fatigue which significantly contributes to accidents the DOT mandates and enforces commercial driver safety hours of service. Commercial drivers are given an allowance of 70 hours with designated mandatory breaks and off duty time. When service hours have been depleted the driver must have mandatory 10 and 34 hours of time off before a reset and issuance of additional duty time.
The DOT and product shippers regulate the cleaning of commercial trailer cargo areas. Special attention is given to temperature controlled units that transport food, pharmaceutical and other temperature sensitive items. Presently pressure washing is the method for cleaning this is known as washouts.
Washouts entail drivers proceeding to a truck wash facility to have this done. Unfortunately many washout facilities are overburdened and not conveniently located to shipping facilities which can be time consuming. This additional driving, idling and truck wear only adds to the existing greenhouse gases (GHG) and resource conservation problems. Other problems are that the driver must record and deduct all hours performing this duty from their maximum allowed duty hours. The loss of service hours reduce the driver productivity, income potential and increases fatigue. The driver is usually not compensated for washouts and companies have increased truck fuel consumption and wear cost.